Spiritual Friendship: Learning to Be Friends with God and One Another

Chapter 8: Giving and Receiving between Spiritual Friends (Book 3.97–134)

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of the one’s face is transferred to the other, whether the one is downcast in sadness or serene with joy. Once a friend has been chosen and tested, you should make certain that he desires neither to ask from his friend nor, if asked, to do anything that is unseemly; then, when you have also assured yourself that he thinks friendship to be a virtue rather than a material benefit, that he avoids flattery and hates fawning obedience, xxvii that he is free with his discretion, patient in correction, and steadfast and stable in love—then, I say, you will experience that spiritual sweetness, that is, “how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity” (Ps 133:1). 132. How useful, then, to grieve for each other, to work for each other, to bear one another’s burdens, when each friend considers it pleasant to neglect himself for the other’s good—to prefer the other’s will to his own, to meet the other’s needs before meeting his own, to oppose his friend’s adversity by interposing himself ( Gal 6:2 )! In the meantime, how sweet friends consider it to deliberate together, to open their pursuits to each other, to examine all things at once, and to come to one opinion about all things! 133. And then there comes prayer for each other, which, as one friend remembers another in prayer, is the more effective as it is directed to God with greater affection, with the flowing tears either excited by fear, or elicited by affection, or compelled by grief ( Job 42:8–10 ). And so, praying to Christ on behalf of his friend, and wishing to be heard by Christ for his friend, he exerts himself diligently and desirously to be heard; and then, suddenly and imperceptibly, the affection at some time passes over to the one loved and, as though touching the sweetness that